


The Morning Cuppa

by CaffieneKitty



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abuse of tea, Community: watsons_woes, Domestic, Gen, Humor, Mornings, Science Experiments, Tea, gratuitous incidental nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2018-01-02 08:57:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffieneKitty/pseuds/CaffieneKitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mornings take some getting used to in 221B.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Morning Cuppa

**Author's Note:**

> Written for watsons_woes July Writing Prompt #27: Use a description or simile from the closest book to you. Quote and book are after the story due to spoilery-ness. 
> 
>  
> 
> _Originally posted on Livejournal July 27, 2013_

Before he fully awoke, John was down the stairs and rounding the landing into the kitchen. _Must've been a loud noise,_ he thought. He blinked in the harsh fluorescent light of the kitchen. Sherlock was still in the same position at the table/lab bench that he'd been when John had gone to bed hours earlier.

"What's-?" John started, but Sherlock shoved himself away from the collection of test tubes and glassware on the kitchen table, muttering and peeling off his lab apron as he headed towards the bathroom. Shortly after, the bathroom door banged shut and water began to run in the tub.

John looked around, didn't see anything obviously spilled or broken that might require an emergency bath and gave up trying to guess at Sherlock's reasons for doing anything. Again. He'd only been living with Sherlock a month and he'd already learned to recognise futility when he saw it.

The clock on the microwave gave a time that was too early to be up, but too late to go back to bed. John grunted, shrugged, and while keeping an eye on the floor for broken glass or pools of unknown liquid, went to find the kettle. It was under an avalanche of newspaper, but thankfully free of contamination.

John went into a sleepy autopilot, fetching a mug (mugs? Mugs. Sherlock could probably use a tea when he got over whatever had sent him to sulk in the bathtub) setting them out on the crowded counter with tea bags, pouring water when it boiled, adding milk to his mug and leaving it out of Sherlock's, since he didn't have his flatmate's tea preferences memorised.

There was something about making tea. You could make tea in your own kitchen (whether it was turned into a lab or not), you could make tea in the pre-dawn light between Afghanistan hills in a Ghillie kettle, you could make it in a mug, you could make it in a pot. No matter where it was or how it was being presented, you could make tea, and tea was home.

John picked up his mug and nearly brought it to his mouth before his tea-making autopilot shut down with alarm bells and klaxons.

John's mug of tea had developed a high foaming head. Tan in colour, rather like the head on a glass of dark ale. It inexplicably smelled of bad wine and garlic. As John looked at it, it let out a forlorn blorp, as though his tea was saying, "How could you _do_ this to me?!"

"John!" A tsunami of long-limbed Sherlockian splashing emanated from the bathroom. "JOHN! DON'T USE THE MILK! IT'S NOT MILK!"

John looked down at his foamy tea and sighed.

The bathroom door slammed open and Sherlock stumbled out wild-eyed, soaking wet with shampoo in his hair, vaguely clutching a towel.

"Cheers," said John, raising his mug to Sherlock.

"Don't drink it!" Sherlock exclaimed.

John rolled his eyes. "Of course I'm not going to drink it you berk. I don't know about you but my mum taught me not to drink anything that's foaming and emitting odd-smelling gas. This looks like it came out of a bog. Is it safe to dump it down the drain, or will it erode the plumbing?"

Sherlock didn't answer, instead lowering his own foamy head and peering at the cup in John's hand. He approached, stalking drippingly across the kitchen floor like a wet lion on a linoleum Serengeti.

"What?" John said when Sherlock was less than a foot away from the foaming mug.

"Tea." Sherlock bent to face the tea at eye-level, scrutinising the froth. "Being added to the tea has changed it. John, you are unintentionally brilliant!"

"...Thanks?"

Sherlock snatched the mug from John with both hands, leaving none to hold up the towel which hit the floor with a sodden splack.

John looked up and away to the light fixture overhead. "Um. Sherlock?"

"What?" Sherlock said, gingerly placing the tea on the table next to the lab equipment and reaching for a dropper.

"You'll want to put at least your lab apron on if you're going to do more science today."

"Mm?" Sherlock looked down at himself. "Oh."

"I'd also suggest some pants if you intend to sit on anything in the kitchen."

"Right. Go get me some then. I can't leave this alone now you've started it. It's still developing." Sherlock reached behind himself and picked up the mug of tea the not-milk hadn't been added to left on the counter. He took a sip while he watched the foam on John's mug rise ever higher.

John inhaled, then exhaled in a sigh, and turned to retrieve the lab apron and some clothes for his mad flatmate. After that, he was going to get dressed himself, and if Mrs. Hudson wasn't up yet, he'd go down and sit on the front step of Speedy's until it opened and he could get a cup of unmolested tea.

-.-.-  
(that's all)

**Author's Note:**

> Well. The closest book was 'The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Extreme Edition' which doesn't lend itself well to descriptive passages or simile, but in the random section I opened it to (How to Survive If Your Food Is Being Poisoned, which it seems [I've already written](http://archiveofourown.org/works/976091) XD) I found this: _"A percolating drink - or one that appears to be foaming or emitting quantities of odd-smelling gas - should be avoided."_ And so, John has his tea abused again.


End file.
